Shimon Shetreet: Israeli gov't wants to change judiciary to give prime minister 'total power'

The attempts at changing Israel's judicial system by the government is an effort to give the prime minister total power, Prof. Shimon Shetreet, told Tamar Uriel-Beeri on The Jerusalem Post Podcast. 

Shetreet, a former politician and minister for Israel's Labor Party and current Greenblatt Chair of Public and International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explained that the government brought the proposed judicial reform in bad faith and with a bad motive. 

"They didn't want to change, they didn't want to correct, they didn't want to amend, they didn't want to rectify," he explained. "They want to destroy the system and create a system of government where the executive has total power over the judiciary."

This would be in addition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's control over the other branches of government. 

"Already, they [the prime minister] have total control over the legislature, because the ministers are the leaders of the party in the Knesset and coalition, and the prime minister also controls the government," he said. 

The goal of the first stage put forward by Justice Minister Yariv Levin, he said, was to control the attorney-general, abolish judicial review, and make a personal confidence-based system for appointing government legal advisers. 

"I cannot agree to any point that they made," he said. "And the last months show that they are continuing with that you call judicial reform and what I call revolution."

Shetreet further noted that the plan is nothing less than to give the executive control over all branches of governance. 

In 1953, then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion relinquished the Knesset's authority to appoint judges, creating the Judicial Selection Committee.

"That was considered to be a move to ensure the independence of the judiciary and a process of the selection of judges based on merit," he said. The new change, however, is to have judges appointed on a political basis. 

"The whole thing looks totally political," Shetreet criticized. "Unlike what is required by any standards in the modern thinking of judicial independence."

This further harms the fragile system of checks and balances, though Shetreet argues that Israel doesn't have such a system at all. 

"The Knesset is controlled by the government," he explained. "And the government is controlled by the prime minister. So we don't have checks and balances, neither do we have a federal system, neither do we have a bicameral parliamentary system, neither do we have any international human rights convention that we are bound to."

The independence of the attorney-general

One aspect of the Israeli legal system that still maintains some degree of independence is the office of the attorney-general. However, Shetreet noted that this independence is currently being targeted by the government. 

"The government thinks that she [Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara] does not help them to rule, that's what they argue," he said. "What does it mean, helping to rule? If you are making illegal decisions, and the attorney-general tells you it is unconstitutional or illegal, that's not preventing you from ruling, it's preventing you from not obeying the law."

He described the government's attempts to remove Baharav-Miara from office and saying they do not have confidence in her as "strange and unacceptable."

"The attorney-general serves for a fixed term of five years or six years, and for that period, the attorney-general is independent and can make decisions autonomously, without intervention or dictation from the government," Shetreet said. "What this government thinks is that whenever their action is declared unconstitutional or illegal, that it is a disruption of their ability to rule. But that's a misconception."